Laughing In Cancer’s Face

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month I purchased a t-shirt I’ve been wanting for a long time. Here’s a picture of it:

Isn’t it awesome? It’s so awesome I made the picture huge. I love it, although I’ll probably be too embarrassed to wear it anywhere other than a breast cancer event. Still, I just had to have it. Gotta love cancer humor.

(Random side note: That’s not me in the picture. It’s from the website where I bought it. I’m not sure why they would use such a small-chested woman to model a shirt about fake boobs. Not that there’s anything wrong with small boobs, it’s just that most people associate fake boobs with big boobs. I’m just sayin’…)

Cancer humor… isn’t that an oxymoron? That’s like saying you had a good cry. How can crying be good? And how can cancer be funny? But in both cases it definitely can be true.

When I was diagnosed in May of 2006 the jokes began to fly right from the get-go. We hadn’t even left the exam room when I made my first boob joke – with tears streaming down my face – to my husband. To inject humor into a horrible situation might seem irreverent, but it felt right at the time.

I honestly don’t think I could have made it through my treatments without humor. It was my saving grace. My friends who knew me well joked right along with me. Especially my husband. Everyone knew it was a serious situation, including me, and no one was minimizing that. The jokes were simply a coping mechanism, a way to stay sane. I am thankful to all my friends who recognized that and didn’t get freaked out by my irreverence. I’m even more thankful to those who embraced the irreverence and joined in with their own cancer humor.

Clearly I am not the only cancer survivor/fighter who embraces humor to deal with cancer. The proof is in the products. Do a search on “cancer shirts” and you may be surprised by what you find. I googled it just now and then clicked on the shopping link. Google came up with 73,786 results. Then I googled “funny cancer shirts” and got 15,506 results. Over 20% of all cancer shirts are funny. That’s actually quite a lot. Cancer humor is all over the Web.

The first funny cancer shirt I got was from a good friend of mine. It was a plain white tank top, with modestly-sized, simple, lowercase lettering. The shirt simply said, “f–k cancer”, only it spelled the whole thing out. Talk about irreverent! But I loved it, and had a good laugh when I saw it. I have never worn it anywhere outside the house, but sometimes during treatment when I was feeling crappy I would put it on. It’s so inappropriate that it never failed to make me smile. Even my mom, who was 75 at the time, loved it so much she wanted one of her own.

If you want a funny cancer shirt (or mug or bumper sticker or button or…) where do you go? Three sites to start with are Got Cancer?, Zazzle and Café Press. While the latter two carry a multitude of cancer products it’s not their only focus. Got Cancer? on the other hand is dedicated solely to, as they say on their website, “laughing in cancer’s face!”. I love that tag line.

So no, cancer isn’t funny but it doesn’t have to take your sense of humor. We all cope with cancer differently, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. But for many of us we get through it by making fun of our situation. And for me, that means lots and lots of boob jokes. Which is awesome, because boobs are hella funny.

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